Hunt Down the Moon
by Kilerkki
Summary: Inuzuka Hana wants a mission that'll test her to the limit. She gets three unbearable teammates, a nasty wolf demon, and enemy ninja who're gonna make sure her team never gets home alive. But that's only if she doesn't strangle them first... [ON HIATUS]
1. Enter the Dynamic Duo

Hunt Down the Moon

-

Out to save the world, fleshing out one character at a time

Or four (seven if you count the dogs) at once!

-

Just so you know: Inuzuka Hana, Kamizuki Izumo, Hagane Kotetsu, Tatami Iwashi, Mozuku, and Shiranui Genma are all real, certified, appear-in-databook canon characters. Akira, Amaya, and Katsu have been given original names but are canon creatures. Characterizations of Kotetsu and Genma owe much to their players at the Naruto RPG Imamade Nandomo. The plot, however, is all my own.

* * *

Chapter One: Enter the Dynamic Duo

The Chuunin lounge smelled of bad coffee and stale cigarettes and cheap Chinese take-out, and the unseasonable heat wave wasn't helping matters much. Inuzuka Hana wrinkled her nose and wondered if getting up to open the windows would really be worth it. True, there was the off-chance of a breeze, but walking to the windows would bring her past the small knot of young men reclining against the wall by the water cooler, and her headache was bad enough already.

Even from her seat at the far end of the room, where the plastic-padded benches were wide enough to let her three dogs spread out (and hot enough to cling stickily to her bare legs; who'd have thought there'd be downsides to wearing shorts in a heat wave?), she could hear the other Chuunin talking. They weren't making any effort to lower their voices, and she was willing to bet that not all of the paper cups they clutched contained anything as innocuous as water.

"That was _your _fault," a spiky-haired man a few years older than Hana was growling to another young man whose straight dark hair fell like a shield over his right eye and cheek. "_You _were the one who spiked the Jello. Idiot."

His friend smirked. "But you gotta admit, watching Tonbu dance on the table—"

"—was enough to give me nightmares, thanks very much," a third young man muttered sourly. Hana recognized him, although he hadn't worn that silly pointed beard when she'd last seen him—which had been _years _ago, when they'd taken the Chuunin exam together. Hana had passed and Tatami Iwashi hadn't, and she'd gone on to medical and then veterinary training, leaving old classmates and acquaintances behind.

Only now she was back, stifling in a lounge she hadn't visited in years, because Konoha needed all the ninja it had, and somehow Hana found that tending her family's dogs and helping out at the hospital and running a few tracking or border-patrol missions every month or two wasn't enough anymore.

Screw initiative. What did it get you but a worried family, an odd look and a half-hearted lecture from her adopted older brother (who was just, she privately suspected, relieved that she hadn't decided to join the ANBU), and a long wait in the Chuunin lounge for missions that somehow never came?

Problem was, she didn't fit any of the typical patterns for Konoha ninja. Her distinctive appearance—cheeks tattooed with crimson fangs, canine teeth just long and sharp enough to give any would-be lover second thoughts—and the nin-dogs she _could _not leave behind immediately excused her from any of the usual kunoichi missions. She and her three nin-dogs were a team of their own, and they fit uncomfortably at best into the regular team dynamics of 'normal' shinobi. She was a vet but not quite a medic, a Chuunin who'd never led a human team, a kunoichi who could never go undercover.

And unless there was a missing-nin to be tracked, a runaway to be found, or a dog to be healed, she was pretty much extraneous.

Akira's heavy head shifted in her lap, and the dog rolled an inquiring brown eye up at her. She rubbed his ears, biting back her grimace. Of course the dogs could sense her unhappiness; they'd been together for nearly fourteen years, and Akira, Amaya, and Katsu were nin-dogs, shinobi in their own right, who could read her mood from the slightest change in her scent or the barest twitch of her muscles. She didn't have any right to upset them…

But, blast it, didn't those idiots by the water cooler have anything better to do than compare the stories of their latest drunken escapades?

"At least _I _don't perform strip teases on the bar when I'm drunk," Iwashi was saying heatedly to the Jello-spiker, who just grinned.

"I wasn't drunk _that_ time. Anyway, haven't I been hearing some fairly incredible stories about your singing abilities? Mozuku here says you had the whole bar in tears…"

"Tears of pain, more like," a bespectacled man snorted, lifting his paper cup in a toast to the flushing Iwashi. "Swear a dying cat would be more musical."

"But you're one to talk, Izumo," the spiky-haired man put in, leaning down to refill his cup from the water cooler. "D'you think I can't hear you singing in the shower every morning?"

"Isn't it wonderful to wake to the sounds of running water and joyful music?" the Jello-spiker asked blandly. This time all three of the other men snorted derisively. Izumo grinned. "Besides, singing when sober is much better than singing while drunk. It's so much easier to remember all the obscene lyrics."

"Speaking of which," Mozuku said with a flicker of a glance towards the door, "did you hear the latest about Kurenai-sensei and—"

His voice cut off in a rather unfortunately high-pitched _Hey! _as Hana's kunai whistled past his nose and embedded itself in the wall. Four pairs of startled eyes swung round, and Hana found herself on her feet in the midst of an equally startled tumble of dogs, head pounding, chest heaving with breaths that came much too hard for something so simple as throwing a kunai. Her hands trembled with fury, and she fisted them deliberately at her sides.

"I don't know what you heard," she snarled, "and I don't care. But Kurenai's a friend of mine and a comrade of _yours, _and I'll thank you to keep your filthy tongues off her name. Or I might have to rip them out."

At the moment, with her headache pounding more fiercely than ever and her simmering temper erupting in righteous wrath, the threat was entirely sincere.

Mozuku straightened, opening his mouth indignantly, and Hana's dogs bristled. Surprised as they were, they'd caught her mood instantly and spread out in attack formation, muscles tensed and hackles raised. Akira and Amaya took the left and the right, and Katsu stood in front of Hana, deep chest rumbling with his low growl. They'd already picked out their targets, and their black lips curled up to bare gleaming white fangs.

At least Mozuku and Iwashi looked suitably impressed. But of course the other Chuunin couldn't let it stand at that. The spiky-haired man leaned against the water cooler with his arms crossed over his chest and his brows lifted in sardonic amusement, but the Jello-spiking Izumo took a quick step forward, already armed with a boyish grin and a _What-can-you-do? _shrug. "We didn't mean any offence, ah, Inuzuka-san," he said, dark eye glancing from her dogs to the crimson fangs tattooed on her cheeks. "If you'd care to join us, I'm sure we could find some topic more suitable to all tastes?"

"Like PMS mood swings," the spiky-haired man muttered to Iwashi out of the corner of his mouth. Izumo shot him a hard stare.

Hana's stopped just short of including shuriken.

"I'd rather discuss thumbscrews with a Stone Country torture-master," she snapped, and felt nastily vindicated (if a little puzzled) at how the charming smile dropped abruptly from Izumo's face, leaving it curiously blank. The spiky-haired man muttered something a little louder; it sounded like "You _bitch._"

She could _really _have used a good fight right then, and for a moment she hesitated, half-ready to start one. But the Chuunin lounge wasn't the place for a brawl, and it certainly wasn't the place for a young kunoichi anxious to prove herself to start…proving herself. A wordless snarl did nothing to alleviate Hana's feelings, but at least it left her with the last word. She spun on her heel and stalked out of the room, dogs clustering around her legs, head pounding worse than ever.

_Gods _she needed to get a mission and get out of Konoha…

-

Shiranui Genma found Hana in her favorite training spot, a clearing just outside Konoha's walls and only a short distance from the Inuzuka estate. She'd worn out her anger rough-housing with her dogs, and now the four of them lay in a panting, tangled heap, too hot to even move from where they'd fallen. The dogs' heavy fur scratched Hana's bare skin and overheated them to the point of near-prostration; she'd begun to wonder idly if they would object too much to being clipped like horses for the summer, or if Katsu's pride would overwhelm his sense of practicality. She'd lay odds on the pride.

Even with her senses overloaded with the ripe scents of crushed grass, bruised leaves, human sweat, and human and canine blood, she still managed to catch the familiar tinge of polished steel and faint musk that always clung to her adopted older brother. She groaned, closed her eyes, and counted five. "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

Genma chuckled. Leaves rustled as he pushed his way through the last of the undergrowth girding the clearing, which meant that he was alone and relaxed; a Genma in full Special-Jounin-Former-ANBU mode made no more sound than a ray of sunbeam trickling through the forest canopy. Amaya whined and lifted her head for a scratch, and Genma crouched down beside the tangle of dogs and woman to comply. "Not trouble exactly," he said lazily. His senbon clicked against his teeth as he shifted it to the other side of his mouth. "Unless you count Yamashiro Aoba bursting into the Jounin lounge shouting that I'd better get down to the Chuunin lounge quick and put some kind of leash on you before you took the place apart."

Hana pushed herself up on her elbows, scowling. "Where does he _get _these stories from? He wasn't even there. And anyway," she added, "I kept my temper. Barely." She ripped out a handful of grass and dribbled it over Akira's back; he grumbled half-heartedly but didn't bother moving.

"They're so _stupid!_" she burst out at last. "I don't know what I've been missing, these past five years, and I'm beginning to think it should stay that way. I can't get a regular mission, can't get a decent-by-the-gods conversation, can't even get any _friends…_"

"You've got me," Genma pointed out, stretching out on his back beside her. Amaya instantly plopped her head onto his chest, and he tousled her ears. "And Kurenai-san, and Raidou, and that whole mad hornets' nest you call a family. And the dogs here, of course. What more d'you want?"

She glared up at the sky, and then at Katsu, who'd draped himself over her lower legs and refused to move. But… "I dunno," she confessed at last. "I thought…I thought being a vet and a part-time tracker was enough. And then it _wasn't _anymore, but now that I _want _a mission, I can't get one. Maybe I should try for Jounin rank; maybe I could be more useful there…"

"If you want to," Genma said, tickling Amaya's nose with a blade of grass. The bitch crossed her eyes and sneezed, and Genma threw the grass blade away and at last looked up at Hana, his brown eyes as serious as they ever got. "If you really do feel you're not doing any good here as you are. You're saving lives, not taking them—"

"I'm giving distemper booster shots to puppies and routine dental check-ups to every dog I can pin down without losing a hand," Hana snapped. "Maybe if I'd been a medic, not a vet… But I _am _a fighter, Genma, it's what I'm bred to be, and the dogs and I are going crazy pinned up here. I'd even jump at—at—" She stumbled, clutching in vain for any mission horrible enough to express her feelings.

"A tracking and retrieval mission with the Dynamic Duo and a third, as yet unnamed, Chuunin?" Genma suggested.

"Actually that doesn't sound so bad; I was thinking more of—wait." She twisted round to face him full-on. "Tracking and retrieval with the _who?"_

Genma seldom really smiled, but when his eyes crinkled in a certain way and the senbon dangling from his lips tilted upwards, she knew it was about equivalent to a full grin on somebody else. "The Dynamic Duo," he repeated himself, fishing one hand inside his vest. Paper crackled. "Hagane Kotetsu and Kamizuki Izumo, specializing in scroll techniques and interpersonal diplomacy, respectively. Gods know how they've managed to work together all these years, let alone stay friends, what with Kotetsu's snark and Izumo chatting up every girl he meets…"

"Wait a second," Hana said slowly, her brain at last catching up. "Izumo. Snark and… oh gods. Kill me now."

He pulled the folded paper out of his vest at last and handed it over, smirking. "There's the specs, if you want it. Iruka in the mission office says it's B-level at least; there's a good chance of enemy shinobi between you at the target. They need a medic and a tracker to round out the team, and I told 'em I thought you could do the job."

"Thanks a lot, aniki," Hana said sourly, but she took the paper, eyes already scanning the specs the mission office had provided. "Retrieval of a stolen scroll from a minor feudal lord on the north-western border of the Fire Country…said scroll thought to be shinobi in origin and may possibly contain forbidden jutsu…risk of intervention by enemy ninja high…"

Genma, listening to her with a wry little quirk to his lips, flicked his senbon to the other side of his mouth and scratched Amaya's ears.

If nothing else, the results of this mission were going to prove _very _interesting.

* * *

Author's Note: per iamzuul's advice, I thought I might just indicate to those of you who are not as minor-character-obsessed as I am where these characters appear. 

Inuzuka Hana: Inuzuka Kiba's older sister, a vet and a Konoha Chuunin, who appears briefly in the manga in chapters 137 and 235. When she fights to defend Konoha, she is accompanied by three large grey nin-dogs.

Kamizuki Izumo: one of the two Chuunin examiners who conduct a special "pre-test" for the genin hoping to enter the Chuunin exam; he later comments on the fights in the third Chunnin exam and works as an assistant to the Hokage. Always seen with his best friend, Hagane Kotetsu.

Hagane Kotetsu: see Izumo, above, the difference being that Kotetsu has spiky hair, allergies, and a nose-wrap. Also that their characters are way different, but you've probably already figured that out...

Tatami Iwashi: one of the Chuunin examiners, who brings Anko the video-tape of Gaara's team entering the tower in the second Chuunin exam, and who later accompanies Genma, Raidou, and Shizune on their ill-fated mission. He's got a silly little pointy beard and a rather impulsive temperament.

Mozuku: the Chuunin examiner with square glasses who accompanies Izumo and Kotetsu when they find the bodies of the three Grass genin that Orochimaru killed before the second Chuunin exam.

Shiranui Genma: referee for the third Chuunin exam; also, in my own fanfic backstory, the adopted older brother of Inuzuka Hana.


	2. Teamwork and Tempers

Hunt Down the Moon

-

Many thanks to Hagane Kotetsu of Imamade Nandomo, for allowing me to play with her characterization of Kotetsu; even more thanks to my beta-reader, Phoenix of Eternity, who refuses to allow me to fall back on ninja!logic, and who is the reason this chapter is so late. Greatest thanks of all to _Naruto's _creator, Masashi Kishimoto, for giving us this world to play in.

To anyone who was actually waiting for this chapter, I'm sorry it's so late. However, I assert that the wait has been in a good cause. I've been distracted by the creation of the _Naruto _RPG "Shades of War," an original-characters RPG set at the time of the Second Great Ninja War. We've got some awesome writers and a truly terrific story, and I highly recommend stopping by my livejournal (link through my user profile; there's also a direct link to the RPG _in _my user profile) for more information.

And yes, this _is _a blatant plug.

A final note: I have absolutely no pairings in mind for this story. I can't stop you from reading into it as you please, but keep in mind that Authorial Intention leans heavily in the direction of friendship, comradeship, and brotherly love.

-

Chapter Two: Teamwork and Tempers

The mission specs said that the team was to assemble at Konoha's small south-western gate at 2130 hours, ready for immediate departure. That left Hana barely two hours to formally accept the mission at the office, pack, conduct a final check-up of the wounded dogs she'd be leaving in the clinic for her two teenage assistants to handle, hunt down her mother and her brother Kiba to say goodbye, and figure out exactly what she was going to say when she met her new teammates.

As she should have expected, the last one took the most time. When she slung her pack over her shoulders and left the Inuzuka compound with her three dogs at her heels, she was still trying to decide whether to pretend the confrontation in the Chuunin lounge that afternoon had never happened, or whether she should have it all out at the start. If a team were run like a dog-pack—or the Inuzuka clan—it wouldn't be a problem; she'd fight her teammates singly or together until she could force them to submit to her will and follow her lead.

But humans weren't dogs, and she couldn't expect them to behave in a rational, straight-forward, canine way…

Unfortunately.

_Just play professional, _Hana decided at last, as she took to the roofs to avoid a blocked-off street where the damage from the attack six months ago had not yet been cleared up. Although her flak vest was modified to fit like a second skin, eliminating the scroll pouches her fighting style rendered useless, and although she'd chosen to wear tight-fitting shorts instead of the looser trousers most shinobi favored, it was still a Chuunin uniform; she was still a kunoichi of Konoha, and she wore the vest of a rank she had sweated and bled to earn. As long as she kept her temper, she could deal with her teammates on equal ground.

And if (when?) they managed to provoke her beyond the limits of human tolerance (or Inuzuka temper, which was even shorter), well, a small amount of bloodshed could work wonders for team dynamics.

Roofs, and thinking time, ran out at last. Hana dropped to the ground on the street a few hundred meters short of the gates. The law that forbid any buildings within two hundred meters of Konoha's walls, a distance too far for even the best ninja to jump, was exceptionally useful in times of defense but generally annoying the rest of the time, especially when you were in a hurry. She jogged the rest of the way towards the open gates, her dogs loping around her. Amaya, ranging a little ahead of the rest of them, was the first to catch the scent. She barked sharply and stopped, waiting for the rest of her little pack to catch up.

Hana shaded her eyes against the orange glare of the setting sun and took a deep breath. The wind came from the west, carrying the scents of the three shinobi standing by the gates. Well-treated leather and faintly oiled steel, sweat, a tinge of blood, a whiff of something subtle and spicy. Her brain automatically sorted out the individual scents of the three men and memorized them: one who smelled most strongly of old paper, one who carried that faint spicy odor, one whose scent she knew already from competing against him years ago.

Her mouth twitched in a reluctant smile. Tatami Iwashi was still using that cucumber-scented shampoo.

He was also the only one to acknowledge her and the dogs as they trotted up to him. Spiky-haired Hagane Kotetsu, leaning against the wall and studying a scroll, didn't even look up. Beside him, Kamizuki Izumo sat on the ground with his knees drawn up and his hands dangling between his legs, head tilted back against the wall and his single visible eye closed. He seemed to have gone to sleep. Iwashi glared at them, then stepped out to meet Hana a few yards from the gates.

"Hana-san," he said. "It's good to see you again. I'm, ah, sorry about that incident in the lounge this afternoon—"

"What're you apologizing for, Iwashi?" Kotetsu demanded loudly without looking up from his scroll. "As I recall, _we _weren't the ones eavesdropping on a private conversation. Or throwing kunai."

Hana reined in her tongue with difficulty. "I'm sorry about that," she said at last, stiffly. "Is this the full team?"

"Now that you've consented to honor us with your presence, yes," Kotetsu said, rolling up his scroll with a snap and stowing it in his belt-pouch. "I suppose it would be too much to ask if you've already been briefed?"

"I read the mission specs," Hana said. She was beginning to wonder how old Kotetsu was; he couldn't possibly be more than twenty-four or twenty-five, six years older than herself. How had he managed to live so long without goading anyone to the point of homicide? "Tracking down the thief of a valuable scroll stolen from a minor daimyo in Honji. The scroll's quite old and may contain forbidden jutsu, and the thief was probably a shinobi, with possible back-up. Mission is B-rank, with combat a near certainty."

"Congratulations," Kotetsu drawled. "I didn't think many members of your clan learned how to read."

Hana's fingernails bit into her palms, and the sharp tips of her canine teeth pierced her lower lip. She wiped away the trickle of blood with the back of her hand, trying not to wish that it was Kotetsu's blood instead. Tearing out someone's throat with your teeth was terribly inefficient, anyway. "Look," she snapped, "I don't know what you've got against me or my clan, but I already apologized, and on this mission I'm your teammate, not your enemy. So let's just shut up and get the job done, okay?"

Kotetsu's dark eyes glittered. But as he opened his mouth, Izumo's quiet voice cut him off. "We're wasting time," he said. "If we leave now, we'll be in Honji by dawn." He pushed himself to his feet in one lithe easy motion, adjusting the straps of the pack over his shoulders. "Inuzuka-san, you and your dogs take point," he said. "I doubt we need to look for ambushes yet, but it doesn't hurt to take care. Iwashi'll be behind you, then me. Ko, you guard the rear."

"Got it," Kotetsu said, checking the binding of the shuriken holster at his right thigh. Iwashi glanced quickly from the two other men to Hana and her dogs, then shrugged and settled his pack a little more comfortably on his back.

The fourth human member of the team let out her breath in a long, thoughtful sigh. This wasn't the Izumo she remembered from the Chuunin lounge. The smell was the same, and the dark shield of hair over the right side of the face, and even the casual lounge of the wiry body. But he seemed curiously still now, strangely quiet and grim; she could not imagine this young man spiking Jello at a party or strip-teasing on the counter of a bar. Kotetsu seemed to have noticed the change as well; he looked up from his holster long enough to shoot his friend a sharp, probing glance when Izumo wasn't looking.

Then his eyes flickered on to Hana and narrowed into a glare. Hana returned it in full force.

It was probably a good thing Izumo seemed to have been appointed captain for this team, if he were the only living being capable of making Kotetsu back down. Hana tried to convince herself that the sudden shift in his personality was a good thing as well; calm and focus and seriousness were necessary qualities in a Chuunin team leader.

But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong there. And as she and the dogs headed past the men to take point, she couldn't help but notice the new acrid tinge of worry in Kotetsu's scent.

-

They stopped shortly before midnight to refill their canteens at a shallow stream and massage the aches from their tired muscles. Hana dug jerky and energy bars out of her pack and split them between her dogs. After a moment's hesitation, she offered some to Iwashi as well.

He gave the jerky a dubious stare. "What is it?"

"Venison," Hana said, scissoring off a bite with her sharp canines. "Think I've got some beef, though. And the bars aren't much of anything but sugar and fat and carbohydrates." Tasteless as old cardboard, but they offered the calories her ravenous metabolism demanded.

Iwashi still looked a little dubious, but he accepted a bar and tore off the wrapping. Lacking Inuzuka teeth, he gnawed on a corner for several seconds before managing to break the piece off. Hana finished her handful of jerky and tried not to laugh at Iwashi's expression as he chewed industriously away. "You don't have to finish it," she said at last, taking pity. "What you've got already should last you a couple hours."

Looking relieved, Iwashi rewrapped the rest of the bar and shoved it in his belt pouch. "Thought I was gonna lose a couple teeth there," he said feelingly. "You like that stuff?"

Hana shrugged. "It's standard trail rations for my clan," she said. "Soldier pills work great for a while, but when you go off 'em you're ready to crash and sleep for a week. This stuff doesn't take anything out of you, and it keeps you going as long as you need it. Stores indefinitely, too, and the dogs can eat it."

Speaking of dogs, hers had finished their rations and were starting to get bored. Katsu had waded into the center of the stream and was watching the tiny minnows swirling around his legs as the cool water soothed his tired paws. Akira and Amaya were curled on the bank, dangerously close to sleep. Hana whistled softly, and was gratified to see their ears swivel towards her immediately, pricked and alert. She tossed a final strip of jerky to Katsu, who swallowed it with one snap of his heavy jaws, and then closed the oilskin packet and returned it to her pack. "Ready to go yet?" she asked, shrugging its weight back onto her shoulders.

Iwashi glanced upstream. Izumo and Kotetsu knelt on the bank a short distance away, crouched over an open scroll whose surface glowed faintly white in the light of the waxing moon. Kotetsu was tracing his finger over the scroll and arguing in a low voice; Izumo was listening skeptically. "You've spent too much time in Intelligence," he said finally. "Paranoia's catching up with you. Maybe he doesn't trust 'em either."

"Who doesn't trust who?" Iwashi asked, stepping forward to glance curiously at the scroll.

"It's who doesn't trust _whom,_" Kotetsu corrected, snapping the scroll back up and returning it to his belt pouch before Iwashi could catch more than a glimpse, "and it's none of your business. If Captain Izumo thinks it's not worth worrying about, I shall obey his orders."

Izumo punched him in the shoulder. "Come off it," he said amiably. "Look, we'll keep our eyes open, okay? If it's a trap, well, we'll just spring it and see what happens."

"What's a trap?" Iwashi wanted to know.

"Your mouth," Kotetsu said. "And, like a good trap, it should close." He pushed himself to his feet, cool in the face of Iwashi's glare. "I'll take point from here," he said. "Inuzuka, you and your dogs bring up the rear." He faded into the darkness, invisible within half a dozen steps.

Izumo paused a moment longer. "Stay alert," he advised them. "And, Inuzuka-san, try not to talk so loudly when you're chatting with Lover-boy here. It makes Ko jealous." He grinned cheerfully at them and vanished after his friend.

"_Lover-boy?_" Iwashi sputtered.

"Whatever cheered him up," Hana said darkly, "has something to answer for."

Dynamic Duo, indeed. Izumo seemed to switch moods at the snap of a twig, and Kotetsu's surly sarcasm was going to get him maimed one of these days. They should sell tickets. At one time or another, he'd probably offended half of Konoha, and Izumo must have accounted for the rest.

Still, she couldn't help noticing that Kotetsu wasn't the only one whose scent was now overlaid with the acrid flavor of anxiety.

Paranoia or not, she sent her dogs out to cover their flanks.

-

The sun rose slowly at their backs as the team broke from the woods and ran down the long sweeping curve of a grassy hill. Below them a lazy river bisected the valley, with rice-fields spreading dark green on its banks. Then the hill rose up again, terraced with fields, cut by the long dusty ribbon of the road that wound up through the town sprawling over the hillside and up to the castle crowning its crest. It was one of the old-style castles of heavy stone, probably predating the First Great Ninja War; from a distance it looked grand and imposing, but as the Konoha shinobi drew closer Hana saw that its outer walls were sadly dilapidated and that the roof was missing tiles. The town—which, despite its name, was barely half the size of Konoha—was in even worse condition, and the citizens walked with sullen, downcast eyes and gave the ninja a wide berth. The air was heavy with resentment and fear.

"Low on funds," Kotetsu whispered to Izumo. "Ripe for the buying."

Izumo shrugged an uncomfortable shoulder. "It's the mission," he said. But all the same, he glanced over his shoulder at Hana and Iwashi. "Watch out, you two," he said. "Keep your eyes open."

Iwashi, who had been unusually quiet since they'd crossed the river and begun the long walk through the rice paddies and up the hill, jerked his pack higher up on his shoulders and asked in a low voice, "You don't think—"

"We're thinking all the time," Kotetsu said without turning around. "It's how we're still alive."

Rebuffed, Iwashi shut his mouth and fell back a step to walk beside Hana. Amaya leaned against his leg, begging for a scratch. She'd always been the friendliest of the dogs, and at the last break Iwashi had forever endeared himself to her by offering her the rest of his energy bar. Katsu, who did not approve of friends, clung to Hana's side, stiff-legged and bristling. He glared at everything that moved, and when Akira tried to slide past him to investigate an odd smell further up the street, Katsu whirled and snapped.

"Knock it off, boys," Hana hissed. The last thing they needed now was a fight, with tensions already this high and tempers already so taut. Katsu and Akira both gave her slightly wounded looks, but they drew apart without argument. Akira forged ahead a little, nose to the ground. The odd smell seemed to come from that alley on the other side of the sake bar…

"Inuzuka-san," Izumo said mildly, "this close to Earth Country, dog is a delicacy. I'd suggest you don't let yours go wandering off on its own."

All three of the dogs bristled and snarled. "They can take care of themselves," Hana said coldly, but she whistled Akira back to heel. He came reluctantly, glancing back over his shoulder at the dark refuse-strewn alley.

"What was it?" Hana asked.

Akira's ears flattened to his skull, and he did not meet her eyes. He couldn't tell. His body language shouted of embarrassment, tail tucked between his legs, head lowered in shame. He was the best tracker of the three dogs; they'd seldom encountered a scent he could not interpret. But this one… He growled softly at the thought.

Hana sank her fingers into the thick fur of his ruff and dragged them up to tousle his ears. "It's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it. We'll be heading out of here soon enough."

The dog leaned gratefully against her thigh, and his tail untucked enough to thwack the back of her legs.

But his hackles stayed bristled for the rest of the climb uphill to the castle, and the humans weren't the only ones who were snappish with worry.


End file.
